Vincent Beresford, Geology MSc student in the Department of Earth and Environmental Science, has been awarded a prestigious research grant from the Geological Society of America to support his thesis project. Vince’s thesis project, supervised by Professor Sandra Barr, is a study of field relations, chemistry, and age of plutonic rocks in the Bass River block, part of the Cobequid Highlands of northern mainland Nova Scotia. He will use his data to help interpret the geological history of the Bass River block and its relationship to the major part of the Appalachian mountain belt known as Avalonia. He will begin field work and sampling for his project in late May. Vincent is a graduate of Juniata College in Pennsylvania and began his graduate studies at Acadia in September, 2012. The reviewers of his grant application judged his project to be "well-conceived" and a "huge task for a MSc study", but "definitively worth doing." The primary role of the highly competitive GSA research grants program is to provide partial support of MSc and PhD thesis research in the geological sciences for graduate students at universities throughout North and Central America.